Last year was the 400th anniversary of the completion of the castle of Matsue City in Shimane prefecture and the whole prefecture put on a huge effort to attract tourism and visitors. Despite all the things going on in north eastern Japan at the time they really did great and I took full advantage of being the complete tourist for my two day trip to the city. This being Japan, Matsue did the rather clever thing of putting up an idol group just to promote the city during 2011, the Matsue Maihimetai, which roughly translates as the Dancing Castle Maidens of Maihime (or at least that’s what I would call them if someone had asked me to give them an English stage name!). At their official site you can download one of their songs and learn the lyrics to some others. Here’s a rather simple video online showing their performance in front of the gorgeous Matsue Castle, and also singing about it.

No matter how famous they became or how much they helped to put Matsue on the tourist map during their short time on stage, I think that it’s a great use of a city’s marketing budget, especially as they sent them out on a summer tour across the country. Local talent promoting their own city and showing that it’s not only Tokyo that can do idol groups!

The photos I took of their very sunny midday performance at a stage below Matsue Castle aren’t very good at all, since I had to use my longest lens for the day, a 70-300mm Sigma that is absolutely not built for these situations. But one uses what one’s got, right?